


In the Shadow of Your Heart

by butforthegrace



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Dreams, F/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-19
Updated: 2011-07-19
Packaged: 2017-10-21 13:29:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/225709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/butforthegrace/pseuds/butforthegrace
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tom Riddle is in her head again, talking to her.  He never really left.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the Shadow of Your Heart

**Author's Note:**

> For [At the Close: Harry Potter Wars Comment Ficathon](http://anythingbutgrey.livejournal.com/797887.html).  
> Prompt was: Ginny Weasley [/Tom Riddle], _he's in her head again_  
>  Takes place post-war.

Ginny dreams of him too often.

She talks to him sometimes in her dreams, Tom Riddle. They sit in the Chamber of Secrets—no basilisk, just the two of them, with water dripping around them. Tom is angry. He always is. She supposes she understands why.

“Weren't you supposed to disappear?” she asks him once. “Once the war ended, and Voldemort died?”

Tom shrugs, a sharp movement of his shoulders. “I'm in _your_ head, Ginny. It's all up to you.”

But she can't get rid of him; he is a shadow in her soul, in the dark place where her anger is kept, waiting for her to let him escape. She won't, but her guard slips when she falls asleep, and he finds his way into her dreams without fail, every night. Often he is a ghost in the corner of her vision; as she drives a sword into the body of a gryphon, she turns to look, and he disappears. She kisses Neville and his face turns into Tom's.

In the dead of winter she wakes with sweat settling into the groove between her lip and her chin, Tom's face dancing in her vision. She often has to turn on the light to be sure that she is at home, in her bedroom, and to be sure that Tom is not beside her.

She doesn't tell Harry. He won't listen. Voldemort is dead now, the war is won. He's never remembered anyway that Ginny was once possessed. She always has to remind him. More than a bit unfair, seeing as how he's never had to remind her of anything to do with him.

Tom listens. It's not so much that he understands, because he mostly just gloats at Ginny's pain—the pain _he_ caused her; if he hadn't possessed her none of this wouldn't be happening—but at least he hears what she's saying. Which is more than she can say for just about everyone else.

“Why are you still with him?” he asks her eventually. They sit inches apart on the floor of the Chamber of Secrets. She's learned not to mind the damp.

She shrugs and looks away, uncomfortable. “What else am I supposed to do? Heroes don't get broken up with by their girlfriends. You don't tell a hero you met someone else while he was away fighting the war.”

“Neville?”

She blushes, cheeks turning redder than her hair, and doesn't answer.

“You dream about him,” Tom reminds her.

“And you spy on my dreams.”

“I have to do _something_ , locked away in you. I can't stay in the normal place all the time. You're very angry. It's poisonous.”

“You're one to talk,” she snaps, but she is intrigued by the way he talks about inside-of-her. Is her soul like a house, then, or a very grand castle? Does Tom live in the dungeons, and occasionally try for an escape? Or is he just using some sort of odd metaphor? (Considering that she's still not quite sure whether Tom is actually a figment of her imagination, or some part of the diary that managed to house itself permanently inside her, perhaps these aren't the questions she should be thinking about.)

“It's like a wildfire,” he continues, as if she never said anything. “You should think about unleashing some of that anger, Ginny. Otherwise you'll burn yourself up.”

She shakes her head, gets up and walks away, willing herself to wake. She doesn't want to listen to Tom. She doesn't want to hear these uncomfortable truths. She still worries that if this goes on, she'll eventually raise the memory of the dead again, see Tom Riddle standing in front of her and sucking out her life.

The war's _over_ , she reminds herself again and again. Voldemort is dead. Tom can't come back, because he no longer exists. The diary is long destroyed.

So then why is he still here, in her body, haunting her when he should be long forgotten?


End file.
